Understanding Loneliness in Marriage: A Journey to Connection

Heather McAbee, Founder
Nov 20, 2025
7 min read

Updated: Jan 3

The Silent Struggles of Loneliness

Loneliness isn’t always big and loud. Sometimes it manifests as quiet thoughts that sound like this:

“We’re good roommates, but I don’t feel emotionally close.”
“We talk about the kids and the calendar, not about us.”
“If I share my feelings, I’ll be too much, so I stay quiet.”
“We’re physically in the same room, but on totally different planets.”

On the outside, everything might look “fine.” You might even function well as a team. But inside, there’s a quiet longing to be understood, to be desired, prioritized, or sometimes even noticed.

The Hidden Layer: Your Personal Resonance

In my work, I use the word resonance to describe the pattern your body, brain, and energy are aligned with.

It’s the invisible “setting” on the inside that says things like:

“I’m the one who always has to hold it all together.”
“It’s safer not to need anyone.”
“If I speak up, I’ll be dismissed or shamed.”
“My needs are less important than everyone else’s.”

These inner settings didn’t start in your marriage.

They usually started way before:

in your childhood home,
in your first experiences of love or rejection,
in moments when you needed comfort and got criticism,
in times you needed presence and you were met with silence.

Over time, your nervous system formed a kind of “normal.” Maybe feeling unseen became familiar, or walking on eggshells became familiar, or over-functioning for everyone else became familiar.

Fast forward to your marriage…

If your internal resonance is wired for “I’m alone with my feelings,”

👉 Your system will notice any moment that matches that frequency.

Your partner comes home and goes straight to their phone?

👉 Your body reads: “See? I’m alone.”

You hint at needing support and it falls flat?

👉 Your system says: “Of course. I don’t matter.”

Even neutral events can get filtered through this old lens - not because you’re wrong or dramatic, but because your past is superimposed on your present until you change the pattern on the inside.

Personal Responsibility: What’s Actually Yours (and What Isn’t)

Let’s be clear:

You are not responsible for your partner’s choices, coping mechanisms, or emotional avoidance.
You are responsible for how you show up with yourself, your truth, and your patterns.

Personal responsibility in this context sounds like:

I’m willing to look at how my past might be echoing in this loneliness.
I’m willing to notice where I shut down, numb out, or assume the worst without checking it out.
I’m willing to ask for what I need instead of hoping my spouse will magically read my mind.
I’m willing to nourish my own inner world so I’m not expecting one person to fill every hole in my heart.

Responsibility is not self-attack (remember we are not judging or blaming). It’s self-leadership.

Questions to Explore: Is This Old Loneliness or New?

Grab a journal and sit with these questions. Let your honest answers come up, even if they surprise you:

When did I first learn the feeling I have now in my marriage?
Is it familiar from childhood? Teen years? A past relationship?
What was the emotional atmosphere in my home growing up?
Were big feelings welcomed, ignored, mocked, punished, or shut down?
What did I have to do to feel safe or accepted back then?
Be quiet? Be helpful? Be perfect? Be invisible? Be the peacemaker?
Where do those same strategies show up in my marriage today?
Do I minimize my needs, over-explain, carry the weight, or pretend I’m “fine”?
If the loneliness in my marriage had a message for me, what would it be?
“Speak your truth.”
“Stop abandoning yourself.”
“Create your own life, not just manage everyone else’s.”

You’re not doing this to “prove” everything is your fault (or anyone else’s). You’re doing it so you can gently ask: “What part of this pain is about today, and what part is an echo from yesterday?”

Both matter. But you have different options with each.

Action Steps: Shifting Your Side of the Pattern

Here are some tangible ways to begin shifting your inner resonance and your outer experience—without waiting for your partner to “go first.”

1. Re-establish a Relationship with Yourself

Loneliness is amplified when you’ve abandoned your own needs, desires, and voice.

Reconnect with things that light you up: movement, creativity, nature, music, learning, friendships.
Give yourself 10–20 minutes a day that is only for tending to you—even if it’s just sitting quietly with tea, journaling, reading, stretching, or taking a walk around the block.

Ask yourself each day:

❣️ “What do I need right now?”

❣️ “What would feel nurturing for my body, mind, or heart?”

Then honor at least one tiny piece of that. When you start showing up for you, the internal message shifts from “I’m alone” to “I’m here with myself.” That alone can soften the sharp edges of loneliness.

2. Get Curious About Your Story—Not Just Your Spouse’s Behavior

Your partner’s actions (or inactions) matter, but so does the story you tell yourself about what those actions mean.

For example:

They work late.

- Old story: “If they loved me, they’d hate being away from me.”

They scroll their phone on the couch.

- Old story: “The phone is more interesting than I am.”

Those interpretations might be flavored by earlier experiences where you truly were overlooked, minimized, or rejected. Your nervous system quickly fills in the blanks with familiar conclusions.

Try this instead:

Notice what happened. (Just the facts.)
Notice the story you attach to it.
Ask: “Is this 100% true—or is this story familiar because of my past?”
Ask: “What else could this mean?”

This doesn’t excuse real disconnection, but it gives you the power to interrupt automatic meaning-making that reinforces your loneliness.

3. Share from Your Heart, Not Your Scoreboard

If you’ve felt lonely for a long time, it’s normal to have a mental list of all the things that hurt.

But opening a conversation with, “You never…” or “You always…” usually makes the other person defend, not connect.

Instead, aim for:

Specifics over generalizations
Feelings over accusations
Requests over blame

For example:

“When we spend most evenings on separate screens, I end up feeling really alone and unimportant. I miss us. Could we try two nights a week where we sit together and talk or watch something side by side?”

Rather than waiting silently and accumulating more hurt, you’re taking responsibility for:

naming your experience,
sharing it vulnerably,
and making a clear request

4. Notice Where You Disconnect

Personal responsibility also means being honest about ways you might be disappearing from the relationship:

Do you shut down instead of saying, “That hurt”?
Do you stay busy so you don’t have to feel?
Do you avoid eye contact, affection, or small gestures because you’re scared of rejection—or quietly punishing your partner?
Do you say “It’s fine” when it really isn’t?

None of this makes you the villain. These are protective patterns that likely started long before your spouse ever came into your life.

You can gently experiment with doing the opposite of your usual pattern:

If you normally go silent, try saying one simple sentence about how you feel.
If you usually pull away physically, try a small, safe touch: a hand on their arm, a longer hug, sitting closer on the couch.
If you usually say “it’s fine,” try: “Actually, it’s not fine for me, and I’d love to talk about it when we both have some energy.”

Tiny shifts in how you show up can begin to change the emotional climate over time.

5. Create Connection Beyond Your Marriage, Too

Expecting one relationship to meet every emotional need is a modern recipe for disappointment.

You’re allowed to:

lean into healthy friendships,
join groups or communities that nourish you,
talk to a professional who can hold space for your deeper feelings,
invest in your own growth, hobbies, spirituality, or learning.

This isn’t “giving up” on your marriage. It’s allowing your life to be supported by a wider web so that every ache doesn’t fall solely on one person’s shoulders.

Often, when you feel more resourced and alive in your own life, you bring a different energy back home - less desperation, more openness. That can make connection with your partner easier, if they’re willing.

6. When to Ask for Deeper Support

Sometimes loneliness in marriage is a long season of disconnection that can be repaired. Sometimes it’s a signal about patterns that have never really been safe or mutual.

It’s important to be honest with yourself if any of these are true:

You feel chronically dismissed, mocked, or minimized.
Your attempts to talk are met with contempt, stonewalling, or cruelty.
There is emotional, verbal, financial, or physical harm happening in the relationship.

If that’s the case, your first responsibility is your safety and wellbeing.

Reaching out for help to a repatterning practitioner, support group, trusted friend, or advocate is not a sign of failure. It’s a sign that you’re listening to your body’s signals and honoring your own worth.

You Don’t Have to Stay Alone With Your Loneliness

Feeling lonely in your marriage doesn’t automatically mean the relationship is over. But it does mean something in you is asking for change.

That change might look like:

tending to the parts of you that learned “I’m on my own,”
getting clear on what you truly need and desire now,
practicing new ways of speaking up and reaching out,
or seeking support to rewrite the deeper patterns that keep pulling you back into the same emotional place.

❣️ You are not too much for wanting connection.

❣️ You are not needy for wanting to feel seen.

❣️ You are a human being whose system is wired for closeness.

And the moment you start taking your own loneliness seriously—not as a flaw, but as information—you’ve already taken the first powerful step toward something different.

I hope this helps! Let me know your thoughts.

Namaste,

Heather